Winston is a simple tool used to download the metadata of .torrent files by their infohash (magnet link).

go get github.com/na--/winston

winston [options] infohash1 [infohash2 ...]

To see logs, use the -logtostderr flag and change the verbosity with -v 0 (less verbose) up to -v 5 (more verbose).

Possible options:

• -h: Show the help message
• -output_folder: Folder where you want to save the downloaded torrent metadata files [default="./tmp/"]
• -v: Log verbosity, from 0 (less verbose) to 5 (most verbose) [default=0]
• -logtostderr: Log to standard error instead of files [default=false]
• -alsologtostderr: Also use stderr for log output as well as files [default=false]
• -log_dir: If non-empty, write log files in this directory [default=""]
• -stderrthreshold: logs at or above this threshold go to stderr [default=0]

winston -v=2 -logtostderr -output_folder="./" 4d753474429d817b80ff9e0c441ca660ec5d2450

This will download the torrent file for ubuntu-14.04-desktop-amd64 and save it in the current folder, while showing a fair amount of logs.

Winston is functional but still needs major improvements and optimizations. As it is, it can be used as a demonstration or with small amounts of infohashes. Heavier workloads will be possible in the future (see the roadmap).

1. Finish the simple command-line version
   • CI: essential unit tests and travis build
   • Optimize parallel downloads
   • Improve timeout handling
   • Implement better DHT processing (asking for more peers, better library usage, etc.)
   • Remove hardcoded constants and use flags and/or config file
   • Support magnet links
   • Support getting peers for regular torrent trackers, not just DHT
   • Support PEX
2. Create a simple web user interface
   • Add a persistent work mode that has a simple web interface
   • Allow users to interactively add new hashes via the interface
   • Show download progress and status for the added hashes
   • Add functionality for parsing the downloaded torrent metadata files
   • Add functionality for searching in the torrent metadata
   • Imrpove exported lib interfaces
3. Create a DHT-listening active search engine
   • Use multiple long-running DHT nodes for actively listening to the DHT network
   • Implement other parts of BEP09 and send known metadata to other nodes (help the network)
   • Add integration tests for getting/receiving metadata
   • When one of the nodes finds out an unknown infoHash, winston will attempt to download it
4. Scrapers for augmenting the torrent infodata
   • Scrape normal http torrent directories
   • If new hashes are found, attempt to download the torrent metadata
   • Download other metadata from the torrent directories themselves and connect it with our own

You can use some of Winston's publicly exported library functions for your own projects:

• http://godoc.org/github.com/na--/winston/torrent/metadata
• http://godoc.org/github.com/na--/winston/torrent/peer

Important note: the exported interfaces are not stable and will very likely change in the next versions.

Winston uses the following libraries:

• https://github.com/nictuku/dht
• https://github.com/golang/glog
• https://github.com/jackpal/bencode-go

Also, Winston borrows quite a lot of ideas and some code from Taipei-Torrent by jackpal

Licensed under the MIT License